Uh, it was Snoop Dogg blowing up a branded armored truck in the Vegas desert. Well, that, and a whole lot of gangsta mugging for the camera.

Remember when we told you that, dude, viral marketing to dudes is easy? This is some pretty strong evidence for that argument: celebrity + explosion = humongous hit. But, it also sets the bar pretty low. If this video “event” is hitting 2 million views, what’s the ceiling going to be for better content?

But, there’s no reason to think these principles are restricted to the offline world. While touch, smell, and taste are (hopefully) inaccessible online, clever digital marketers can still take sight and sound to their indulgent extremes. And, few know how to “indulge the senses” quite as effectively as burlesque star Dita von Teese. So, placing her in an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure-style mansion is a sure-fire combination for an immersive digital experience.

The only thing missing in this equation is, of course… err, sparkling water? Yes, welcome to the mansion at Perrier by Dita. (“Not safe for work” might be a little strong, but considering there are interactive burlesque routines, perhaps “not advisable for work” is more appropriate.)

While the site seems like a curious fit for a sparkling water brand, that doesn’t take away from the excellent execution overall. Not only is the first-person experience displayed in a compelling manner, but the interactive elements (such as a teasing dice game with Dita and a chance to “photograph” her in the dark) ensure that the experience is not a passive one for the viewer. This level of indulgent interactivity (meaning the user experience, not the stripteasing starlet) should be the benchmark for online experiences, since they are now competing against everything from pristine iPad apps to augmented reality mobile experiences. Is your website offering a compelling-enough experience to hang with these alternatives?

Don’t forget: we also covered the topic in a more lighthearted manner in our latest Potty Posting, which is available here.

Be sure to follow Upshot on Twitter (@upshot_agency) for information on subsequent Smartshots. And, if you have marketing topics that you’d like to see us tackle (in 15 minutes!), just shoot us a message using the “submit something awesome” box to the right.

But, as the web increasingly moves onto mobile devices, we’d expect these numbers to start shifting back to the young adult males that we stereotypically associate with the web, right?

Actually, no. Mobile social network usage actually shows a greater gender gap than overall internet usage, with women comprising 55% of the population. A recent post from Brian Solis dug through numbers from Nielsen and Comscore – feel free to scroll through all the info here.

And, when we break down these users by age, we’re not just talking about a bunch of Twilight fans. Sure, they’re a hefty piece of the pie (and that pie is pictured below), but everyone up to the 54 year-old crowd is pretty well represented on mobile social networks. (But before you run off claiming that most mobile social network users are middle aged, note that the bigger chunks in the pie chart actually represent larger age groups – i.e. 10 year and 20 year intervals – than the 7 year interval covering 18-24 year olds. It’s a misleading graph, I’ll admit.)

Just a friendly remind that yes, “your” target is on social networks, and if he or she isn’t accessing them via a mobile device, you can expect that to happen soon.

Stay tuned this week for some more details on the topic, as well as a whole slew of great examples. But without further ado, onto the posting!

DUDE! Viral Marketing to Dudes Is Easy

How to spread faster than Swine Flu

Let’s say that your client has struggled for years to crack the code of the highly desirable young male demographic. Recently, the client read somewhere that these dudes are especially receptive to “viral marketing.” Boy, did the brand trip all over itself to fling its first “viral campaign” out the door: a “hilarious” site that was doused in branding, loaded with “Which Entourage Character Are You?” quizzes, and a tweeting mascot. The only problem: their “viral campaign” got trumped by the latest Farting Preacher clip on Youtube, so now the client’s vowing to never advertise online again.

DUUUUUUDE, we’re all making this way too difficult. Men are NOT from Mars; they’re just “dudes.” We’ve been marketing to dudes for years, and we know how to do this! It’s possible that we just got a bit distracted by marketers hyping up their supposedly “viral” campaigns, which ended up completely missing the mark. But let’s step back and think about how dudes normally interact, what they’re already passing along to their friends, and how a brand can wedge itself in amongst that content.

DUDE DICTUM #1: Dudes like to publicly humiliate, embarrass, and prank other dudes.
They’re the first to call a dude and mock him when his team loses. They tell embarrassing stories to a dude’s significant other. They prank each other with fake lawsuits (just ask Cronin or Crokin). They haze the dude, they draw on him with Sharpies, they laugh at him, and they do it all because they’re the dude’s “friends.” Sounds sadistic? Sounds nonsensical? Sounds like you’re not watching Pardon the Interruption or listening to Howard Stern or reading the Sports Guy on ESPN.com, or even watching Punk’d. Dumb or not (okay, it is pretty dumb), it’s just the way dudes tend to interact, so you might as well roll with it. If your campaign has an element where dudes can humiliate a friend, there’s a very good chance they’ll jump at that opportunity. And when they’ve sent that friend the humiliating photo/video/message, congrats, you’re a viral marketer! Anything that involves a user-submission is ripe for this. For instance, let’s say you’re doing research for a Potty Posting and you stumble across a site that lets you upload photos onto the heads of Chippendale’s dancers. Then, you remember that your coworkers have tons of embarrassing holiday party photos on the public drive. You could safely assume that some “dude” would be posting that video within seconds on some public forum (such as, I don’t know, right here on The Awesome Blog?), making this an ideal example of how dudes happily share branded content at the expense of other dudes. (All of this is done in the name of education and edification, of course.)

Bonus tip: Those “Was that real?” videos have a built-in element of friend pranking, since dudes can see which of their friends will fall for them (and maybe test the water if they’re not sure if the vids are real). Whether they’re real or fake doesn’t really matter, as long as the content stimulates conversation and/or debates. The clips that must be fake generate their own discussions about “how did they do that?” especially among dudes who fancy themselves to be amateur mythbusters (along with all those dudes who debate for the sake of debating).

DUDE DICTUM #2: Dudes like to compete, and beat, their friends.
There’s a reason that everything from pickup games to poker games come with a healthy serving of trash-talking: dudes that aren’t embarrassing their friends outright can always humiliate each other by dominating them in competition. Why not stimulate some battles between friends at sites like ibeatyou.com, a social network where people can challenge each other to various competitions? Challenges are inherently “viral,” since challenging someone requires that something be passed along, and it might as well have your brand on it. Again, it doesn’t hurt to make this triumph public: ibeatyou.com has even integrated with Facebook Connect so that all challenges (and victories) can be publicized in each user’s news stream.

DUDE DICTUM #3: Dudes like “dude stuff!”
This point is so obvious that it barely needs its own dictum, except for the fact that we’re so quick to forget it. Without dude humor (and making dudes laugh will NEVER get old), dude-oriented content, and stuff that dudes like, no dude’s going to give your supposedly “viral” content the time of day. We all know the timeless qualities that appeal to dudes: sex, controversy, gross out humor, and stuff smashing into other stuff. Unfortunately, we’re so used to seeing these elements used in such dumbed-down ways (beer ads, we’re looking at you) that we’ve forgotten how to integrate them into great executions. The two extremes aren’t mutually exclusive: tie these longstanding proclivities in with quick wit, unexpected twists, or in-on-the-joke humor and you’ll see results. (Of course we’ve got plenty of examples of this on TheAwesomeBlog.net.) At the end of the day, you know these dudes. They’re your brothers, cousins, friends, coworkers, and probably your dads, too. Do a bit of “dude diligence” before your campaign heads out the door, and ask them if they’d be willing to pass this on to their friends. If not, we’ll expect your campaign to go more monkeypox than “viral.”

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